Fassbender returns once again as Magneto in the 1983-set Days of Future Pastfollow-up X-Men: Apocalypse, and while visiting the set along with a small group of reporters last summer, I got the chance to sit down with Fassbender in between takes to discuss where we find Erik this time around. It turns out, Apocalypse shows a brand new side of a character we already know incredibly well, as the film begins with Erik trying to live a quiet, domesticated life in Europe before it is once again upended by the cruelty of humanity. As a result, he joins up with the centuries-old mutant Apocalypse as one of his Four Horsemen, for the first time becoming a follower instead of a leader. Alongside Storm, Angel, and Psylocke, Erik sets out to protect and aid Apocalypse in the villain’s goal of restoring order to the Earth.
During the course of our conversation, Fassbender spoke about the state of Magneto’s relationship with his son, Quicksilver, the new facets of the character that
we discover in this film, his “ relationship with Apocalypse, and much more. Read on below.
MICHAEL FASSBENDER: I start off in Poland. Erik is basically living a normal life, has a family, has fallen in love, and has basically disappeared for the last eight years or so. He doesn’t use his powers, has left that life behind and lives a sort of simple life.
Well I think he’s serving his family, you know. He does what he does so he can provide shelter and security for his family. In a way you’re right, he’s serving a new master, and I think from before we know obviously that he loses his parents in a concentration camp, but there was always that story of Magda that I thought was pretty interesting. That sort of confounds his mistrust in human beings, so that was a sort of big influence on this story, where we find him.
FASSBENDER: No because we needed him to join Apocalypse in order for the script to work (laughter). I think that’s the classic thing of any sort of megalomaniac there are huge contradictions and hypocrisies within it. It’s almost like sometimes the worst dictators start off as complete idealists, and that almost makes them more extreme in their dictatorship later. So absolutely, what Apocalypse is doing is echoing that, but for him at that point I think it’s just about, “Okay I’m gonna bring as much pain to the human race as they’ve brought me and basically wipe them out once and for all.” In a way, it’s a more extreme, more effective version of how we’ve seen him in the past. It’s definitely the most extreme version of that, but I think he’s just come to a point where he’s been pushed to that place where he doesn’t care anymore, he’s kind of dead inside. In order to make that link with Apocalypse it was a really helpful thing to have that story at the beginning with Magda.
FASSBENDER: Well I think Ian McKellen might have a problem with that (laughs). I’ve seen an interview with him speaking about Iago and how he’s an evil character and he’s like, “Evil, I don’t know what to do with that word.” And that’s true, trying to unravel a character, “evil” is just too broad a word and too cloudy a word—how do you access it, and how do you bring that characteristic and display it in a character without being “Mwahahaha!” Whereas Iago is racist, he’s insecure, he’s got all these other things that are huge things that you can build on. And the same for Magneto, he’s somebody who’s been injured, somebody who’s had all his loved ones taken away from him. He’s quite singular in his thoughts and yes there’s an element of a megalomaniac in there, and an aspect of a dictator for sure. So I always had those things in mind when I was playing him, so I don’t think it’s any more of a progression towards Ian’s Magneto. I think he was kind of doing the same thing.
Between Days of Future Past and this you got some time spent playing Macbeth, is there any carry over there, or do you find any inspiration in that character to Magneto?
FASSBENDER: I don’t know, I don’t think so. Possibly subconsciously. I guess I kind of dismissed your question a little bit, I suppose by the time we see Ian McKellen’s Magneto in [X-Men: The Last Stand] he is, you know, pretty full-on. And I guess, in a way, it was these little steps that lead him to that, what makes him so empty towards human beings? And I think it’s because of these things that they’ve done to him, what they’ve taken away from him, their weaknesses. To me, personally, I know that my biggest fear in life is the mob, the idea of what happens to a mob mentality when people start feeding off each other’s fears and it can turn horribly wrong really quickly. So he’s been at the short end of the stick, putting it lightly, in terms of the
mob mentality and human beings and how they respond when they’re under fear and insecurity. I guess the one thing about the comic book stuff, taking from anything else I’ve done that might be more let’s say anchored in reality, is I’ve always thought that there was an element here in these X-Men stories that is very anchored in reality in terms of people feeling misplaced or pushed to the outside of society. So I’m definitely drawing from real things to sort of ground it and root it in something that I can relate to.
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